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Frida
Miramax Films


7.7

based on 38 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 27 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality/nudity and language

Starring Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton, Valeria Golino, and Saffron Burrows

Chronicles the life Frida Kahlo (Hayek) shared openly and unflinchingly with her mentor and husband, Diego Rivera (Molina), as this young couple took the art by storm. (Miramax)

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Hayden Herrera (book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo) Clancy Sigal Diane Lake Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas
DIRECTED BY:	Julie Taymor
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 10, 2003 Video: June 10, 2003 Theatrical: October 25, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	120 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

The most effective moments in Taymor's gorgeous, surprisingly romantic Frida are those that evoke the visual world from which Kahlo's work was formed or the paintings themselves, often using clever animation and other special effects.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The film seems a mad mix of staid PBS bio-drama, flamboyant musical comedy and surreal cartoon nightmare.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A dynamic portrait of an artist by an artist, one as wry, audacious and erotically charged as its flamboyant subject.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Hayek throws herself into this dream Hispanic role with a teeth-clenching gusto. She strikes a potent chemistry with Molina and she gradually makes us believe she is Kahlo.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

While the script of Frida struggles at times to be something more than an ordinary and-then-this-happened biography, there's a buoyancy to the direction and acting that make the film special.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

The bulk of the film showcases some of the best direction of actors this year.

Variety Deborah Young

Salma Hayek makes the character an icon of female independence, courage and nonconformity, forecasting special appeal for women viewers.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Endlessly interesting. It's about people who thought ideas and art mattered, which makes it a rarity today.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Alfred Molina makes an excellent foil as the easygoing, philandering Rivera, whose public murals were the exact opposite of Frida's private canvases.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Visually, this movie is exquisite. Narratively, well, that's a more banal story.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Frida, the kaleidoscopic drama based on the life of the Mexican painter/feminist/icon Frida Kahlo, was directed by Julie Taymor, which is the movie's first blessing.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

At its best when it forsakes earnest psychological exposition for magic realism, when, instead of trying to explain Kahlo's life, it conjures the moods and sensations that fed her art.

Chicago Reader Meredity Brody

This is the Classics Illustrated version of Kahlo's story--fun mostly for the sets and the clothes.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A romance for the deeply romantic, which means that some people will certainly view it as cynical.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Swank and splashy as it is, Frida leaves the lurking suspicion that Taymor might have preferred to stage her pageant as a puppet show.

Slate David Edelstein

If you want rich folk-art colors, brainy spectacle, and breezy soap opera, then Frida is the biopic for you.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

As directed by Taymor, it's a competent and nicely designed biopic that for all of the director's attempts to link surrealist film imagery with Hayek's depiction of Kahlo somehow manages to be generally lackluster.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It's too bad that this long-awaited movie didn't go further than faithfully re-creating Kahlo's artwork and her studied look. Her passionate and tragically short life (she died at 47) is ideal Hollywood material, but the audience is left wanting a more in-depth portrait.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Disappointing.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Save for two spectacularly impressionistic sequences, Taymor brings little of that imagination to Frida, a turgid and conventional biopic that skips through the major incidents in Kahlo's life without giving them any special resonance, or even much visual panache.

Film Threat Tim Merrill

Frida favors us with plenty of color, a feast of eye candy. As food for the soul, however...there are always her paintings.

The New Yorker David Denby

Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high. You may want to laugh now and then, but you won't look away. [11 November 2002, p. 195]

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A revolutionary life has rarely felt less edgy, or the biography of an iconoclast more bourgeois.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

There's something oddly moving about the film purely as a love story between two people who were more alike than was good for them, yet somehow stuck it out. What we see in Frida is not Kahlo the painter, but Kahlo the love of Rivera's life, as he was of hers.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A domestic melodrama with weak dialogue and biopic cliches.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

All honesty, rebellion and suffering, but no depth.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Mostly, though, Hayek's problem is one of physical miscasting. She's so tiny next to the tall, rotund Molina that she looks like child in their scenes together. And despite a fake caterpillar brow, she's just not believable as a woman bemoaning her disfigurements.

Newsweek David Ansen

Why does this chronicle of a passionate life refuse to catch fire? For all of Taymor’s flashy embellishments -- surreal dream sequences, constructivist collages come to life -- it trudges through the Kahlo chronology with the dutiful step of a conventional Hollywood biopic.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Neither terrible nor excellent; Hayek, who also co-produced, may have obsessed for years about this project, but the result is a fairly standard this-happened-and-that-happened biopic.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Isn't terrible. It's just disappointingly superficial -- a movie that has all the elements necessary to be a fascinating, involving character study, but never does more than scratch the surface.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Skips from episode to episode without illuminating the essence of the woman or her art.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Though occasionally enlivened by fanciful sequences suggesting the surreal power of Kahlo's vivid inner life, it's often mired in the mechanical accretion of incidents that blights most biographical films.

Time Richard Schickel

Julie Taymor's inventiveness has diminished to a kind of strained cuteness. Everything that makes an artist an artist -- the obsessions, the egotism -- is ignored in favor of upbeat movie conventions.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

(Hayek's) performance is far from a disgrace, but it lacks gravitas and soul, a sense of passionate purpose, a hint of obsession. The best Hayek can do with her lovely face is cloud it with worry, but the face of Frida Kahlo demands anguish.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Hamstrung by a script that seems determined to stop at all the big moments in Frida's life (she died in 1954 at age forty-seven) without giving anything time to resonate.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

I doubt if the results would have satisfied Kahlo, whose originality in matters of life, art, and ideas was vastly more far-reaching.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 27 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andrea gave it a10:
Great movie. Still, my hopes about this film were not high, so I can even say I enjoyed. Selma Hayek surprised me, positively. I did not expect her to be convincing enough, but she actually made me believe that she is Frida. Alfred Molina also seems to be good choice for the role of Diego Rivera. This movie is not just for Frida Kahlo fans and admirers, everybody should give it a chance.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Great performance by Salma Haykek and molina. A gorgeous film!

Shannon P. gave it a 1:
This move is superficial, pretentious, and narcissistic. But what really makes the film such a painful experience to watch is that it is just downright boring. Instead of a human story, we are presented with a series of tedious skits and cliches about artists, socialism, infidelity, and bisexuality. The writing is just plain awful.

Yoon Min C. gave it an 8:
Bold and passionate, as colorful and flavorful as the lives of frida and rivera. the actors are pretty good but the real star of the movie is julie taymor the director. like orson welles, taymor has a background in theatre and burns with ingenuity, wit, and energy. she's unapologetic about her wild expressive style but more crucially, her art derives from a sense of the sacred, from the primordial core from which all creativity springs forth. we need this woman of great spirit when what passes for visual expression today are mtv imagery, rampant CGI, or bloated recycled cliches drenched in blood.

Pat C. gave it a 5:
Really didn't know what the story was about or where it was going until the very end. Being familiar with the reserve inherent in Latin domestic relations, I found their conversion to Hollywood standards inaccurate and offensive. I did develop an appreciation of Kahlo's art, which was obviously deeper and more substantial than this movie. Despite having no major problems, the film refuses to be good. It restricts itself to sketching out only the factual elements, then fills them in with a deep rich shade of B.S.

Kim B. gave it a 10:
Outstanding collaborative work of director, cinematographer, actors and the many many others that give this film its exquisite flavor and poignant moments of the pain and passion of Frida Kahlo. It is unfortunate that the critics betrayed the film's potential to enlighten gringo audiences to the wonder and beauty of Mexico and fascinating layers of its complex history. See it, please. You'll want to read and see more.

Joshua W. gave it a 4:
Perhaps more than anyone out there I wanted this movie to be great. I admired everyone attached to the project, and I have been a fan of Frida Kahlo's work for well over a decade now. Unfortunately this movie tried to hard to portray Kahlo as a figure without flaw, as someone who treated adversities as a child would a christmas present under the tree. Having read much on Kahlo, including personal letters she wrote I can say for sure that she was not at all the charater portrayed by Salma Hayek, although her performance was powerful, it was not truthful. Kahlo's crippling accident on the train is the perfect example of how this film deified it's lead. The over the top stylized image of gold dust floating down on the injured Kahlo strips the moment of any real trama, it depicts the accident as a mirraculous gift bestowed upon her. Kahlo's work portrayed her anger and fears as well as her strength, strength which she developed as she learned to deal with what had happened to her. This movie would have you believe that Kahlo was always the same tour de force throughout her life. The movie would have been much better had it shown as a true portrait of Kahlo, a woman who suffered greatly and found strength in her will not to just give up. This kind of growth is the stuff that good drama is made of Kahlo's life had it all, then the makers of this movie drained her of it, making her awesome achievments seem all the more diminished for it.

Frida Miramax Films

Frida
Miramax Films